Both entertaining and exasperating, Dylan Jones' "The Biographical Dictionary of Popular Music" is not the reference book that title teases. It's one man's compendium of thoughts, reactions, reconsiderations and snark about musical figures from A Tribe Called Quest to Frank Zappa.

A longtime journalist, columnist, author and editor-in-chief of British GQ, Jones has heard a lot of music over the decades, met many musicians and interviewed a bunch of them. He's also written books about Jim Morrison and David Bowie (Jones' hero, which should immediately tell you a fair amount about where he's coming from musically).

Beyond his substantial credentials, Jones also has a name that's straight out of rock 'n' roll itself, courtesy of Bob Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man" and The Beatles' "Yer Blues."

He set out to write a book about rock and pop music "not too dissimilar to David Thomson's 'Biographical Dictionary of Film,'" a tome that's famous, both lauded and reviled, for its subjectivity. For pure whimsy, especially in the variable number of words allotted to each subject, Jones may actually surpass Thomson. The band Yes gets 35 withering words, while legend-in-his-own-mind Terence Trent D'Arby gets six whole pages.

Jones brings the wit, the snark, the cutting remark the way Public Enemy brings da noize - in full force. A GQ guy, of course, will have something to say about style and fashion; Jones describes "Daryl Hall (as) looking like a market town hairdresser, and John Oates looking like Super Mario's smaller, uglier brother." Ouch! And Jones likes Hall & Oates, praising their music and declaring "they never went away in my car."

His pithy takes on two incarnations of one famous American band may be cited until the last hippie falls: Jones calls Crosby, Stills & Nash "a varnished log cabin," and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young "a varnished log cabin with an unvarnished door."

He dubs Wisconsin's Justin Vernon of Bon Iver the big example of "a new pop archetype, the Woodsman, the bearded loner in the lumberjack shirt and the scowl, a singer of indeterminate age who fronts a band of sullen subordinates who can't quite believe how successful they are."

He sprays some acid on famed journalist-hater and all-around difficult guy Lou Reed, asking "Am I alone in believing that Lou Reed hasn't made a good record since 1972?" Then Jones goes on to attribute the good quality of that '72 album, "Transformer," to his hero Bowie. Quite a few listeners would line up behind Jones on that.

But I'd say Jones goes too far in his score-settling with his Velvet Underground entry, four praiseful paragraphs that manage to completely avoid mentioning Reed but do include replacement member Doug Yule. Not fair play, Mr. Jones.

Jones doesn't just do mean. He writes with love and keen insight into some of his favorites, which include The Clash, Stevie Wonder, Ray Davies of the Kinks, Keith Moon of The Who, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra and John Barry. Yes, Barry of the movie soundtracks. Jones has a thing for lounge, easy-listening and middle-of-the-road music of quality and is happy to share on the subject.

He also suggests "Reggae's Greatest Hits," an annotated list of 25 albums from Culture's "Two Sevens Clash" (1977) to U-Roy's "Super Boss" (2007) that may send readers racing to Spotify and iTunes.

In his introduction, Jones notes that some of the book's entries are rewritten versions of earlier articles and interviews, and this shows, not always in a good way. The hook or occasion that led to a newspaper or magazine piece, and is discussed in detail, may have made sense in the original context but seems awkward here. Keith Richards gets 23 pages, and is more than interesting enough to merit them, but seven of them consist of a rehashed Q&A related to his admittedly excellent autobiography, "Life," and could have been condensed or dispensed with. A sentence complimenting her singing ability was apparently justification enough for Jones to include 14 pages on Shirley MacLaine, a fascinating figure but not one who belongs in this book.

However, in fairness to Jones, his 20-page reported essay on the sad state of Brian Wilson loses nothing in the context of the book, and his long piece on Steve Winwood, among other entries, may move readers to listen with fresh ears to music they thought they put on a shelf long ago.

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